


By Decades and Centuries

by yonnna



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Gen, actually sorta lighthearted, descriptions of niki's injuries but they're not Too graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 02:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9102187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonnna/pseuds/yonnna
Summary: She heals by fractions of fractions.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this entirely because Elmer says in Man in the Killer that "I’ve been told it (the grand panacea) has a bit of a mind of its own and naturally improves things over time, but with injuries like yours… It might take a very long time." and I'm in Niki hell so my thoughts immediately went to her.

In three hundred years, Lucrezia has heard five times as many opinions on the matter. First her personal physician — then many more physicians, called in from all across the motherland at her beck and call, and when their prognoses fail to satisfy her she calls upon alchemists, herbalists, faith healers, even a few who claim to be _witches_ or  _sorcerers_ ; she calls upon anyone who will hear her story and offer their remedy. At one point she even turns to the church, daring to think that prayer may move a God she is not sure exists to save a woman he has _never_ seemed to care about. No matter where she turns the cure they give her is the same: 

 _Time_. 

It is not the answer she wants, but it is the only answer they can give: perhaps in time her wounds will heal, perhaps in time their prayers will be answered, perhaps in time their magics will take effect, perhaps in time the grand panacea will improve her health, perhaps in time God will show his mercy.

Time is a cruel mistress, but shows brief glimpses of kindness. 

 

* * *

 

 

When she is dragged from the rubble she cannot move for the pain. She cannot walk, cannot talk, cannot lift her head from her pillow without wincing. Her wounds weep through wrapping after wrapping; a maid must dress her in clean bandages every hour for these first weeks. She lives in a hazy state, only half awake at best. Count Boronial sits at the foot of her bed for hours on end speaking to a woman who only _daydreams_  back. 

She is most responsive when she wakes from nightmares — or perhaps only _memories_ — heaving and grasping, _grasping_ with shaking hands for anything she can hold onto. When Esperanza cannot be there personally he ensures that _someone_  is, to hold her hand, to keep her from straining herself in bouts of fear, to speak to her whether it reaches her or not; it must be a terrifying thing to be trapped in one’s own mind, and he would not have her be alone during her few escapes. 

Some things _do_  change when she drinks the elixir: it is no longer necessary to change her dressings multiple times a day, her cuts do not bleed and her burns do not weep. Yet _she_  still weeps. Immortality does not spare her pain or suffering; she is a broken doll, her porcelain cracked in ways that no amount of glue or tape can make good as new. Lucrezia expects her to leap out of bed and thank her for her help, but she cannot turn her head to look at her for the pain in her neck; she only stares at the ceiling, vacant. 

 _The grand panacea takes the body as it is_ , she is told. It preserves life; it does not _restore_  it. 

 _But something must_ , she decides for herself. 

Lucrezia waits for that _something_ every day. The Count no longer requires his maids to sit at Niki’s bedside when he is occupied — Lucrezia takes the duty on herself in full. He questions her motives initially, all too aware of how much Niki has suffered to put her in the hands of one so lacking in _virtue_ , but she treats the woman with as much care as he does and this is all he can ask. She cradles her in her arms when she awakes crying, she calms her enough that the maids can feed her her breakfast and supper, she sings to her in a voice so clarion it rings down the hall to Esperanza’s study, and so soft that it fosters his trust in her. 

For the longest time there is no improvement at all — then there are minuscule ones; improvements so subtle that if Lucrezia had not been by her side near constantly she would not see them take effect, improvements so slight that if she blinks she will miss them, but _improvements_. The flowers of hope blossom slowly. 

It is three summers later when she is first able to sit up. More precisely, she is able to _be_  propped up; she wrestles out of one of her nightmares with more fervour than usual and jolts halfway upright, and though she collapses after mere seconds, she does not seem pained when they place extra pillows at her back to raise her. She stares out the window now — no less vacant, but Lucrezia thinks it must be a more pleasant sight than the ceiling. Sometimes she looks out, too, and they are just _silent_ , watching stories unfold on the streets. Through the glass their wicked little city looks quaint, lovable; boys and girls run past, shaking water from their hair, their bare feet burning on the sun-baked cobblestone, their laughter echoing. Sometimes she thinks she catches a glimpse of longing in Niki’s eyes, but when she looks closer there is nothing there at all. 

In the spring Lucrezia recites poetry. Niki is being taught to read and write — she can use her left hand well enough (and if the church says this is sinful, neither she nor Esperenza _care_ ), though her concentration is prone to lapsing after long periods. Sometimes she glances down at the pages with what can only be regarded as _comprehension_. These attentive moments grow longer by small degrees, and by the winter she has phases of consciousness long enough that if Lucrezia sets the book in her lap she will turn to her favourite poem herself. 

Her eyes light up at certain words: _love_ , _connection_ , _soulmate_. 

“ _My_ , Niki, I never knew you were such a romantic,” she giggles when she finishes reading, and it is a playful jest but she is truly delighted to see _any_  manner of emotion on her face. She sets the book back on her lap, ready for her next selection, and rests her chin in the palm of her hand. “ _Do_  tell me who it is that poem reminds you of. I _adore_  love stories.” 

Her eyes are wide and bright as the moon, and Niki turns her own away in embarrassment. 

“Oh, goodness! I’ll have to guess. Is it _Essa_? He’s very chivalrous. Quite handsome, too — but he’s rather  _chaste_  for my taste. Did you know the man has _never_  touched a woman? — Or another man, for that matter.”

Niki shakes her head _no_. She takes her quill and writes the name into the margin of the page. Her handwriting is that of a child, messy and looping, but Lucrezia takes a second to decipher it and claps her hands together in delight. 

“Lebreau? Hmm, he _is_  quite charming in his way.” Niki nods, _yes_. “Perhaps one day he’ll return to visit you, dear.” 

He doesn’t — not that day, or the day after, not in the months or years that follow — but time goes on without him, and Niki smiles at his every mention but learns to smile at other things, too. 

She spends more time awake now, and Esperanza says that she must be bored out of her mind sitting in bed all day (he does not know that her days are filled to the brim reliving her memories). He finds the time to teach her how to play chess; she never wins, and the games often drag on for hours with her intermittent losses of reality, but he never becomes impatient, never raises his voice, only waits quietly for her mind to catch up. She manages a smile every time he congratulates her on a move well made, and he tells her she is getting better whether she is or not. Lucrezia thinks he is just as lonely as she is — surrounded by his maids and only _truly_ able to speak to a woman who cannot speak back. 

She does not know that he sees Maribel in every fit of hysteria and every period of stark emptiness, in the way that her emotions spill out of every edge and then drain from her entirely, in her pain and her loss, and that he longs to give to her what he did not offer then. _Comfort_ , reassurance, company, a hand to hold. If he cannot be anyone’s saviour, he will dedicate his life to being damage control. 

— And he does. He dedicates sixty long years to making her days more bearable. She remains frozen in time (as Maribel does in his memory) while he sits at her bedside greying, but he does not resent it. If the last thing he does in his life is play chess with a beautiful woman, then he considers his life well-lived.

Having no heirs, he divides his possessions between his maids, and leaves a certain amount of gold for Niki, which he entrusts to Lucrezia to ensure that she is well-fed and well-looked after for as long as she lives. Lucrezia, for all her greed, holds to this promise. The city falls under Dormentaire rule now; she can have everything she wants without taking from what little _Niki_  has. 

On the day of his burial, Niki surprises them all by forcing herself to her feet. He had looked after her as though she was his own sister, and she will shatter every bone in her body new if that's what it takes to honour him — but her bones do _not_ shatter. Her legs quake, and she must lean on Lucrezia for support, but they hold her weight. She limps to his funeral between the arms of two of his former maids, hunched over and cringing but _standing_. 

The woman who has spent every day for sixty years dying begins to learn how to live anew; she surprises herself with how _well_ it hurts to try.

For a long time she cannot stand up straight — she retches blood and bile with every attempt. She overhears doctors tell Lucrezia that it is internal bleeding, from the force of the explosion. She overhears Lucrezia ask what can be done about it. _All we can do is wait_. She is given crutches and she uses them daily for long walks in the gardens with Lucrezia at her side; it pains her, but so does laying still, and the flowers are beautiful. She had never taken the time to look at flowers when she’d been _alive_. 

She heals little, and sporadically; the grand panacea has a life of its own, and does not conform to the rhyme or reason of known medicine. Some days, some great, miraculous days, a horribly broken part of her may heal without explanation — they are walking down the street and she suddenly does not need crutches to stand — but more often it is a slow, creeping recovery — an angry burn on shoulder fades into a scar, an open cut on her abdomen closes by millimetres per year. She heals by decades and centuries, not by days and weeks. She heals by fractions of fractions.

One day when she is particularly thoughtful, she asks whether she will ever be better. 

"I don't pretend to know what the world has in store, darling."  

But she is watching hope slowly blossom. 

Three hundred years ago she spent day after day at the bedside of a woman who could not lift her head without causing herself harm; today, she walks down the street with one who, if a little absentminded, if a little uncoordinated, if a little shaky, can stand on her own two feet, and nod, and shake her head, and understand her questions. 

Niki, for her part, recalls the words of an old friend, and finds some small thing to smile about every day: for the way her feet ache only _slightly_  when she stands on them, the way her mind can focus on things other than her dying moments — on memories of her rescuers, of her lover — sometimes, the way that her hand can write and her eye can read, the way that she can turn her head and look at the world around her, as though she is seeing it all for the first time. For death and rebirth and growing into her own body again. 

The woman who has only known death finds a way to learn how to live, by fractions of fractions, by decades and centuries. 


End file.
